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Show A A Story of Ticonderoga Dean Stanley Tells the following story in Fraser's Magazine. "In the middle of the last century the chief of the Campbells of Inverness had been giving an entertainment at his castle on the banks of the Aar. The party had broken up and Campbell was left alone. He was roused by a violent knocking at the gate, and was surprised at the appearance of [unreadable] one of his guests, with torn garments and disheveled hair, demanding admission. ‘I have killed a man, and I am pursued by enemies. I beseech you to let me in. Swear upon your dirk - swear by Ben Crunchan - that you will not betray me.' Campbell swore, and placed the fugitive in a secret place in the house. Presently there was a loud knocking at the gate. It was a party of his guests, who said, ‘your cousin Donald has been killed; where is the murderer?' At this announcement Campbell remembered the oath which he had sworn, gave an evasive answer, and sent off the pursuers in a wrong direction. He then went to the fugitive and said, ‘You have killed my cousin Donald. I cannot keep you here.' The murderer appealed to his oath, and persuaded Campbell to let him stay for the night. Campbell did so, and retired to rest. In the visions of the night the blood-stained Donald appeared to him with these words: ‘Inverawe, Inverawe, blood has been shed; shield not the murderer.' In the morning Campbell went to his guest, and told him that any further shelter was impossible. He took him, however, to a cave in Ben Crunchen and there left him. The night again closed in, and Campbell again slept, and again the blood-stained Donald appeared. ‘Inverawe, Inverawe, blood has been shed, shield not the murderer.' On the morning he went to the cave on the mountain, and the murderer had fled. Again at night he slept, and again the blood-stained Donald rose before him and said, ‘Inverawe, Inverawe, blood has been shed. We shall not meet again until we meet at Ticonderoga.' He woke in the morning, and behold it was a dream. But the story of the triple apparition stayed by him, and he often told it among his kinsmen, asking always what the ghost could mean by the mysterious word of their final rendezvous. In 1758 there broke out the French and English war in America, which, after many rebuffs ended in the conquest of Quebec by General Wolf Campbell of Inverawe went out with the Black Watch, the forty-second Highland regiment, afterwards so famous. There, on the eve of an engagement, the General came to the officers and said: ‘We had better not tell Campbell the name of the fortress which we are to attack tomorrow. It is Ticonderoga; let us call it Fort George.' The assault took place in the morning. Campbell was mortally wounded, these were his last words, ‘General, you have deceived me; I have seen him again. This is Ticonderoga.' |